Fragments towards an aesthetics of frailty

architectural therapy

[Guardian] While Gaudí was part of the art nouveau movement – or modernisme, as it’s known in Catalunya – he was also a revolutionary structural engineer. He made an upside-down model of the Sagrada Familia to test his structural theory, which he then tested in practice when he built Colònia Güell. “Without that first trial, I’d never have dared adopt the design for the temple,” he said. It now appears that it began earlier still, as an experiment in both architecture and psychiatry, in the gardens of the hospital at Sant Boi. (read)